Tightrope (Burning Cove #3)(35)

Take it easy, Jones. She doesn’t fly anymore. She’s an innkeeper now.

“You can get killed just as easily by going down in the net, you know,” she said as if she had read his mind. “Land wrong and you’ll break your neck as surely as you will if you hit the floor.”

“You’re scaring the daylights out of me, Amalie. Let’s get back to what happened in Abbotsville.”

“There really isn’t much more to tell. I’m pretty sure Harding drugged me that night at dinner. I woke up to find the point of a knife at my throat. He put a wire necklace strung with glass beads around my throat and forced me to climb the ladder to the platform. He ordered me to grab the bar and fly. I knew he meant for me to die. I goaded him until he lost his temper and stepped out onto the platform. The moment he did that he was in my world. I was in control. I used the trapeze bar as a weapon. He went down. I didn’t.”

There was a sudden silence from the passenger seat.

She was telling the truth, Matthias thought, or, at least, the truth as she remembered it. He downshifted for an upcoming curve and tried to read the scene she had verbally painted.

“There must have been a lot of evidence,” he said. “The knife. The necklace.”

“The crime involved circus people and the circus was due to leave town the following day,” Amalie said. “The cops just wanted us gone. The press turned the whole thing into a lovers’ triangle story. Marcus Harding had been spending a lot of time with Willa Platt, the equestrienne in the show. There was speculation that I was jealous and that I had somehow persuaded Harding to climb the ladder so that I could murder him.”

“You said the platform was your world. But I’ve seen trapeze platforms. They are very narrow. It’s a miracle that Harding didn’t take you down with him.”

“I was good,” Amalie said. “One of the best.”

“Did you ever get a chance to fly again?”

“No. The circus was barely hanging on as it was. The Abbotsville incident was the end. But even if the show had survived, it’s unlikely that anyone would have wanted to fly with me after that. There would have been too many questions about what really happened up there on the platform. The rumors would have destroyed my career.”

“How did you end up with the cash to buy the inn?”

“My mother had a head for business. Before she died she was the one who kept the books for the Ramsey Circus. At some point she bought a few shares of stock in a couple of speculative oil companies and gave them to me. She told me they were my inheritance. After the show folded I dug out the shares. I was amazed when it turned out that they were worth a few thousand dollars. I spent it all on the Hidden Beach Inn.”

“What happened to your parents?”

“They died in an accident a few years ago.”

“A trapeze accident?”

“No. A train crash. I survived because I was in a different car. They never had a chance.”

“I’m sorry.”

Amalie did not speak.

“Any other family?” he asked.

“Just my aunt Hazel.”

“What about your mother’s people?”

“My grandparents disowned my mother when she ran off with my father. When the Ramsey show closed for good, Hazel convinced me to contact my relatives on Mom’s side of the family. I got hold of my grandfather on the telephone. They were not interested in meeting me. I think they blamed me for my mother’s death.”

“How did they come to that conclusion?”

“My mother was pregnant with me when she ran off with my father. As far as they are concerned, if it hadn’t been for me—”

Amalie made a small gesture with her hand, leaving the conclusion unsaid.

Matthias exhaled with control and gripped the gearshift so tightly it was a wonder it didn’t fracture. Every family was different, he reminded himself as he accelerated out of the curve. Feuds, quarrels, bitterness, and resentment could pass down through the generations, just like the color of one’s eyes. Nevertheless, he had a hard time dealing with the concept of a disowned daughter and an unacknowledged granddaughter. In the Jones family, you were always family, no matter what happened.

“So these days, it’s just you and your aunt?” he asked.

“And Willa. She showed up on my doorstep this morning. She had nowhere else to go.”

Matthias thought about the petite, vivacious blonde he had seen at the inn that afternoon.

“Is that the woman Marcus Harding was seeing shortly before he tried to murder you?”

“Yes. Willa Platt.”

Matthias frowned. “She just showed up out of the blue? Now?”

“She reads the papers like everybody else.”

“And she tracked you down.”

“She needed a job and a place to stay.”

“Was she in love with Harding?”

“She was in love with the future that he promised her.”

“Did she blame you for his death?”

Amalie hesitated. “At the time. But you have to understand—she was devastated by what happened in Abbotsville. She had believed that Harding adored her and that they were going to be married and move to the Ringling show.”

“What makes you think,” Marcus asked evenly, “that Willa Platt doesn’t still blame you for Harding’s death?”